In The Onions’ A.V Club hamburger review series; Cattle Crawl, writer Erik Adams has given Casino El Camino a perfect score of four stomachs.

We wonder if he he has some sort of time machine that has transported him back to the late 90’s when Casino was still punching their own french fries, slicing their own buns and putting out high quality hamburgers? The review starts off on the wrong foot entirely when 6th street is referred to as “dirty 6th”. We’ve never, ever heard this term to describe the jungle that is old Pecan Street.

Yes, we’ve read it on the occasional website that has a tenuous relationship to Austin, but heard a local who’s been here for longer than say, before Rio Rita opened, speak the term?

Hardly.

Then it just gets silly when the weakest burger on the menu is championed with the following statement “barbecue sauce and cheddar ooze from every bite of the K.C. Burger, but never to the detriment of beef ”

We suppose that’s right, if you like liquid smoke laced barbecue sauce filled with treacly corn syrup. The KC burger is pitiful, cheddar cheese and weak, commercial barbecue sauce do not a winning flavor combination make.

It gets worse.

Casino’s freezer bag french fries are then championed with the following: “Add fries , and you’ll want to add the fries…”

At one point in the arc of the Casino kitchen, you did indeed want to add delicious, house cut, from an actual potato-fries.

That’s where the time machine might come in.

Cause Casino hasn’t cut a real potato and turned them into fries in years.

We’ll always have misty water colored memories of Casino el Camino’s perfectly turned out hamburgers of the distant past.

Unfortunately that era, along with the great food the kitchen was putting out then, is long gone.